Finally, a little relief.

Mom got a cat scan on Tuesday, we got the results Wednesday.  Chemo is working!  Major reductions in most of the spots with cancer.  Yeah!

CAT scan next week

It's been crazy.  The spring trip to Hawaii was bumped up to this fall.  Mom has a CAT scan next week. 
She is starting to become more tired and sweets don't taste good anymore.  That's got a be a bummer. 
Meanwhile, I am contending with a vicious cold and some big deadlines (my own inflictions of course).
No matter what your status, don't forget to tell the ones that you love, how much you love them!

Big Reality Check

All my life my family moved.  We rarely went to the same school two years in a row.  The one exception was junior high.  We actually attended school in the same school district for approximately 4 years.
I have never stayed in touch with anyone from school/college.  I moved a lot as an adult too. 
This means that my Mom and sister, Michele, are the only other people that have been through everything in my life, I realized I don't have a huge network of friends and family that KNOW me and my life.
With Mom fighting her battle and a sister that is in the military, works as a nurse and a single mom... I suddenly became aware that once my Mom completes her life cycle, all I will have left will be my sister. 
I feel like my life is disappearing.  I don't have the network of life long friends to help me re-live the memories of my life. 
I love my sister, but the truth is that she has a busy life and struggles just to remember to return calls.  She has never come to visit me.  I don't even know how she could pull it off with her demanding schedule.
I am terrified....  I don't have a husband, children or anyone else to help me remember my life... my history.
My father... is starting to forget.  The Alzheimer's will take his memories and history too.
This has become the most lonesome and frightening emotion that I have experienced in this journey.

1 Quiet Week

Finally a quiet week without too much to report on the "parental units".  I needed one of those.  It's Sunday, I have today and tomorrow all to myself to do whatever I want.  Don't you just love those days!

It's been a rough couple of weeks.

The story got interupted....
Mom now has intrusions on her liver.
How in the hell are you supposed to say that?

I am pretty overwhelmed.  I started out with just telling a story because the life was painful.  Now it's... alarming to say the least.

Re-cap
Breast cancer
Re-occuring breast cancer
Dry cough led to re-occuring breast cancer
   Sternum and lung
Therapy to try to hold the growth
New chunks on liver...

This isn't eloquent.  I ususally try to be but I am so beat down, I can only be honest.  No patience for sensitivity right now. 
There is another portion of the recent equation that is troubling, but I don't have strength to talk about knee replacement or plastic surgery....
Oh yeah, that's in the mix too.
How does one find the logic??????????? 

The saga continues.

The rest of the summer remained quiet.  Fire season was also very mellow. 
In October, on Halloween, I got a call from my Mom.  My grandmother had passed away.  She had been declining, not eating and was finally ready to go.  And she did. 
I thought I would be a mess, instead I felt relief for her.  She had been struggling since the first of the year.  Now she could truly rest.
I didn't go to the funeral.  I can't handle funerals.  I had said goodbye in my own way while visiting her the previous February.  I didn't really want to be around a bunch of people during that time.  My grandmother would understand my decision.

Later that summer...

Sometime in July, my Mom tells me that my sister wants to plan an all family trip to Austrailia.  I was excited at first, but that didn't last long.  I work in the wildfire business and it happened to be one of those mild summers without many wildfires.  So money was tight.
Then I started thinking about what that trip might be like.  My sister tends to hand her kids off, to anyone when she's on vacation.  Furthermore, no one in the family is a night owl like me.  So after tending my sisters kids all day, watching my mom wear herself out telling dad what to do all day, there would be no one up past 9PM to go to the bar with me for a WELL deserved drink.  Besides, me drinking alone in bars full of aussie's would probably be grounds for a new reality show.
So a few day's later, I called my Mom back.  I told her how I felt about it.  She said she understood about the money thing and the other logistics.  She suggested that I call my sister.  A couple of days later, I finally get my sister on the phone.  I let her know how I felt about the trip and my concerns and issues.  After a few moments of hem-hawing around, she drops a bomb on me.  Moms cancer was back again. 
I really don't remember much about what was said during the remainder of the conversation, but my heart, brain and body was struggling with all the competing emotions.  Sadness, fear, anger, abandonment, heartbreak.... just to name a few.
I immediately called my mom back.  I wasn't very nice, but God Damn It, just because I am so far away doesn't me that I don't need know. 
I could go into details about that lengthy painful conversation, but I think you could put 2 and 2 together.
Later that week I called Dad to see how he was doing.  He was freaking out.
The bad part was I got so hungup on the emotional battle, I didn't do any more homework on the situation.  And I doubted that my Mom would have told me the truth anyway.
I will stop here, because the next part of the story will require some clarity.